ThinkProgress assessed the sport’s environmental footprint last month. Their calculations suggest that one race uses 6,000 gallons of fuel, emitting 120,000 pounds of CO2. That’s in addition to the eight to 10 sets of tires each of the 40 teams use and the oil in the engines. Hell, until 2007, NASCAR used leaded gasoline. (To the sport’s credit, they are increasingly using slightly-more-environmentally friendly ethanol in their fuel.)

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is one of NASCAR’s top drivers. He’s a legacy in the sport; his father was killed in a crash at Daytona in 2001. Over the course of his career, Junior (as he’s called) has raced 455 times — meaning he alone can be credited with about 1.36 million pounds of CO2 just on the track. And that’s not to mention the other emissions from burning fuel: particulates and contributors to smog. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is not exactly a champion of air quality.
But unlike most drivers, Junior really hates air quality. From Politico:

NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be the new face of coal in a television ad touting the fossil fuel as a low-cost solution for power generation. …

“Most people think of me as a race-car driver, but I’m a business owner too,” Earnhardt says in the ad. “And at my company, the cars run on gas but the business runs on electricity. That’s why I’ve been learning about how coal keeps electricity prices down.” He suggests viewers visit [some website] to learn about “clean coal.”

The ad does not discuss Environmental Protection Agency regulations and makes no political statements.

Odd that a pro-coal group wouldn’t have a racecar driver include a nuanced, balanced discussion of the EPA’s attempts to limit air pollution! And that it would include a plug for “clean coal,” which, along with “the energy fairy” and “Casper the Friendly Ghost,” will soon solve all of our energy problems.

Junior’s advocacy, however well-intentioned, is disappointing. The health problems from coal power are legion. Take Kannapolis, N.C., a town northeast of Charlotte in Carrabus County. It’s where Junior is from. A map from the Sierra Club shows how close Kannapolis is to four coal-fired power plants. It’s surrounded by them, including one deemed a “biggest offender” nationally, in red on the map below.

Every year, that big offender, the Marshall plant, puts out 12 million tons of carbon pollution — and massive quantities of particulates and other pollutants that cause a number of health problems, including asthma. The link between coal power and asthma is strong, which may explain why Carrabus County is in the top third in the state when it comes to the asthma rate for children under the age of 15. And North Carolina is doing comparatively well when it comes to asthma. Many more states are not so lucky.

Junior never signed up to be a spokesperson for dirty air. He just wants to drive fast and make a little extra cheddar by doing spokesman work for what he sees as a small business issue. We get it. He’s wrong, but we get it. He doesn’t mean to advocate for dirty air in everything he does. He is just trying to help.

Filed under: Coal]]>http://grist.org/news/why-does-dale-earnhardt-jr-hate-the-air/feed/03281145015_b90b62aa46_bpbgrist3281145015_b90b62aa46_bScreen Shot 2012-07-31 at 1.13.43 PMA weekend of protests barely makes the papershttp://grist.org/news/a-weekend-of-protests-barely-makes-the-papers/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_coal
http://grist.org/news/a-weekend-of-protests-barely-makes-the-papers/#commentsMon, 30 Jul 2012 20:58:46 +0000http://grist.org/?p=120565]]>There were at least four major protests this weekend targeting fracking, nuclear power, pollution, and mountaintop-removal mining. Here’s a quiz: How many of these protests did you know about?

Anti-fracking protestors march in Washington, D.C. (Photo by TXsharon.)

There were also protests in Japan and China. Earlier this month, some 100,000 people rallied in Tokyo to try and prevent a nuclear generator from being turned back on. Over the weekend, tens of thousands more marched outside of Parliament with the same aim: calling on the prime minister to halt the use of nuclear power. (There were no reports of banjos.)

The pipeline that residents fear will pollute their water will not be built, the government promised on the Qidong police micro-blog and the website of Nantong city, which oversees Qidong.

This apparent victory for residents follows another one this month when protesters in the southwest city of Shifang, in Sichuan province, forced officials to scrap a planned copper refinery. A large demonstration halted a petrochemicals plant in Dalian, in eastern China, last year.

Environmental experts cheer the growing rights awareness among China’s citizens that forced the Qidong decision, but they caution that China will face many more such protests unless the government overhauls its opaque decision-making process and allows the public to participate.

More than 50 protesters affiliated with the R.A.M.P.S. Campaign have walked onto Patriot Coal’s Hobet mine and shut it down. Ten people locked to a rock truck, boarded it and dropped banners: “Coal Leaves, Cancer Stays.” At least three have been arrested [Editor’s note: This figure was preliminary] with another in a tree being threatened by miners with a chain saw. Earlier in the day, two people were arrested at Kanawha State Forest before a group of protesters headed to the state capitol.

And that was your “What Protests Happened Over the Weekend?” quiz. How many of those protests had you heard about? One? None?

Now ask yourself this: Did you hear that people were upset that NBC tape-delayed the Olympics?

Filed under: Climate Change, Coal]]>http://grist.org/news/a-weekend-of-protests-barely-makes-the-papers/feed/0627440257pbgrist627440257qidong2Mountaintop-removal mining contaminated up to 22% of streams in southern West Va.http://grist.org/news/mountaintop-removal-mining-contaminated-up-to-22-of-streams-in-southern-west-va/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_coal
http://grist.org/news/mountaintop-removal-mining-contaminated-up-to-22-of-streams-in-southern-west-va/#commentsFri, 27 Jul 2012 20:01:06 +0000http://grist.org/?p=120200]]>Here’s an absolutely stunning look at the impact of mountaintop-removal mining on a section of southern West Virginia:

Decades of mountaintop-removal mining may have harmed aquatic life along more than 1,700 miles of streams in southern West Virginia, according to new research. Mining companies have converted 5% of the region to mountaintop mines. The resulting water pollution has caused so many sensitive species to vanish that 22% of streams may qualify as impaired under state criteria, the researchers report. …

Using satellite images taken by NASA between 1976 and 2005, [lead author Emily] Bernhardt and her coauthors created maps of mountaintop mining in a 12,000-square-mile region of southern West Virginia. They found that companies had converted 5% of the land to mines during this period. …

Bernhardt’s group found that salinity and mineral levels in the region’s streams increased with the total area of mountaintop mines. The researchers also found that as the number of mines increased, fewer sensitive insect species were detectable downstream.

Satellite view of the region. The light-colored area is actively being mined. (Photo by NASA.)

What’s being mined, of course, is coal: coal that often ends up being shipped overseas, contributing to growing carbon pollution in Asia. The scale of the findings is astonishing: 600 square miles of mountaintop-removal contaminating as much as 1,700 miles of freshwater streams. Not much else to say.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% say investing in renewable energy sources like solar and wind is a better long-term investment for the United States than investing in fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil. Thirty-six percent (36%) think fossil fuels are a better long-term investment.

What’s particularly remarkable about this finding is that Rasmussen is often considered to be more friendly to conservative issues. In fact, Nate Silver, the Times’ polling wunderkind, wrote that the firm’s 2010 election polling was “biased and inaccurate,” “overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average.” He goes on: “The discrepancies between Rasmussen Reports polls and those issued by other companies were apparent from virtually the first day that Barack Obama took office.”

If Rasmussen says that Americans prefer renewables, then you can take that to the bank.

Coal suitable for fueling these new plants is turning out to be scarce and expensive, leaving many in India to ask if it has any selling point left at all. It also is losing its luster as certain renewables, such as wind and solar, become more cost-competitive.

It’s unclear whether or not the fire was extinguished. A fire in an old coal mine in Centralia, Penn., has been slowly burning since 1962. It’s one of scores of coal mine fires burning in the United States.

Here’s another summary that’s more helpful than the one that started this article. Coal: Expensive, unpopular, combustible.

Filed under: Coal]]>http://grist.org/news/today-in-coal-americans-hate-it-india-hates-it-siberia-hates-it/feed/0coal-plant-carouselpbgristcoal-plant-carouselCoal company changes its mind about sworn testimony, decides a big pile of coal ash outside is just finehttp://grist.org/news/coal-company-changes-its-mind-about-sworn-testimony-decides-a-big-pile-of-coal-ash-outside-is-just-fine/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_coal
http://grist.org/news/coal-company-changes-its-mind-about-sworn-testimony-decides-a-big-pile-of-coal-ash-outside-is-just-fine/#commentsWed, 25 Jul 2012 21:53:48 +0000http://grist.org/?p=119743]]>It seems like a decent bet that the Prairie State Energy Campus, a massive coal plant in southern Illinois that just started operation in June, is at the tail end of a long trend. There will be more coal plants, to be sure, but I’d be willing to bet there won’t be many more at the scale of Prairie State. So it’s only fitting that its debut be marked by broken promises and threats.
Coal ash, in its uncontained form, seen in Tennessee.

Midwest Energy News has the story. In 2005, while seeking a permit to begin construction, the company told the local zoning board that the tons of ash produced by burning coal would be shipped out of the county to permitted disposal sites. That was good enough for the county. Zoning variance granted.

About a month ago, shortly after the first generating unit went live, Prairie State Generating Company paid county officials another visit.

On June 26, the Washington County Board met behind closed doors with the lawyer from Prairie State and passed an amendment to an ordinance that granted the company permission to build a 720-acre coal ash landfill on flat farmland near the controversial Marissa, Illinois, plant.

The amendment allowed the company to bypass the normal zoning process, which would have involved public hearings, and negotiate a contract for the landfill with the county—all out of the public eye.

Why did the board agree?

“Our attorneys and powers that be told us there was a good chance if we did not negotiate they could go ahead and do it on their own,” he said. “So if we tried to fight, nothing would be gained other than a big bill over court fees.”

So did Prairie State actually threaten to sue Washington County if they failed to approve the landfill, and if so, on what grounds?

“That was never explained to me,” said Brent Schorfheide, another member of the Washington County Board. [Board member Gary] Suedmeyer said he was not at liberty to say because of the closed proceedings. And when asked that question, Prairie State spokeswoman Ashlie Kuehn responded, in an emailed statement, “no comment.”

Unlike in Tennessee, Prairie State plans to contain the ash in a dry form, periodically wetting it in hopes that tames the dust. Eventually, they expect the pile of ash to reach 250 feet — the height of a 25-story building.

At least Prairie State explained why it changed its mind about promising to house the ash in a remote location.

At the June 26 meeting, … [local resident Dale] Wojtkowski mentioned that Prairie State’s president had promised under oath in 2005 that there would be no coal ash disposed of in Washington County.

“It just kind of amazed me the answer I got: that it was because the people who owned the property were unwilling to sell it at the time,” Wojtkowski said.

And as everyone knows, if a situation changes in any small way, sworn oaths are automatically called off. It’s what makes our system great.

Congratulations, Prairie State. You’ve done your best to ensure that the coal era is remembered in its most accurate light: unconcerned about the impacts on people, and putting profits first.

Coal exports have nearly doubled since 2009 to 107 million tons last year, now accounting for almost 12 percent of U.S. production. Three out of every four tons that are exported come from the Appalachian region, and often this coal is produced by mountaintop removal mining — a devastating practice that has blanketed communities with soot, contaminated drinking water, and destroyed 2,000 miles of streams.

Some key data points from the report:

97 mountaintop removal, steep slope, and surface mines in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Virginia exported American coal overseas in 2011, compared to 73 in 2008.

Coal exports from surface mines in these four states have grown by 91 percent since 2009 to 13.2 million tons in 2011.

Twenty-five of these mines exported more than half of their production in 2011. And six of these mines exported nine out of every 10 tons they produced last year.

Overall, these 97 mines exported 27 percent of their production in 2011.

There are two ways to address the problem. The first is the approach taken by the House Democrats: raise awareness of the issue. The second is to restrict the ability for coal to be exported.

The government should look at the effects of large-scale exports from all the Northwest coal export projects in the hopper, and evaluate mining, local impacts such as train and barge traffic and global issues such as global warming.

Chart created by Sightline using data from EIA’s Quarterly Coal Report.

Anyway, it occurs to us: There are three ways to address the problem. The third is to transition away from coal and make other means of energy production the norm around the world. It’s just that raising awareness of exports and trying to completely shut off ports — however long the odds of success — are far more likely to happen over the short term.

Here’s our mantra. Let’s take the coal out of power production, and keep it where it belongs: a few hundred feet underneath dirt and trees in Appalachia.

It spews lead, smog, mercury, and carbon dioxide, but for our present purposes, let’s focus on its gigantic ponds and piles of coal ash. Not only are they leaking chromium into the groundwater (see this report [PDF] for more on that), they blow great white clouds of coal ash across the community of Paiute Native Americans in the adjoining town of Moapa. Lots and lots of Moapa Paiutes are getting sick and dying. EPA is in the midst of considering whether to require expensive upgrades to the plant; the anti-coal movement is agitating to shut it down.

Anyway, that’s the background. So last week, a local Las Vegas NBC affiliate decided to do a news report on it. Here reporter Reed Cowan presents the Paiutes’ perspective, along with NV Energy’s contention that the coal ash does contain arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals, but that it is “technically not toxic.”

As you see at the end there, the intent was for this to be a two-part story, and for the second part to convey NV Energy’s perspective. Watch what happened:

Wow.

So first off, NV Energy’s attempts to shape the story were so ham-handed, pissed the reporter off so much, that he led by revealing their behind-the-scenes attempts at manipulation.

Then NV Energy sent out, for an interview, the employee whose job it is to monitor coal-ash ponds and dust. When asked what’s in all that coal ash, he replies: “I don’t know.” Again, NV Energy chose this guy.

Then NV Energy drags the reporter inside to witness a pregnant employee, the logic, I suppose, being, “She breathes the dust and she’s pregnant. So what’s the problem?” She shows off the monitoring equipment, except, um, there’s no monitoring of the coal ash. But she’s pregnant! So.

Then! The NV Energy PR guy steps in and starts trying to guide Cowan’s questions. He suggests that the Moapa Paiutes are just being emotional. This from the guy showing off the pregnant employee.

The crude manipulation clearly infuriated Cowan, because the two-part series then became a three-part series. He decided to ask some actual scientists what’s in the air:

NV Energy insists that the air and dust are perfectly healthy. They tested it in their labs and everything cleared. So.

Cowan and crew take the sample to an independent scientific lab for testing, and oops! The concentrations of chemicals — chromium, arsenic, etc. — are high enough to be toxic. The chemist says, “If I had this kind of exposure in my laboratory, I would evacuate the laboratory until it got cleaned out.” Ouch.

The story finishes with a Moapa Paiute saying, “It’s as simple as death. Slowly but surely, we’re all dying off.”

In the wake of all this, EPA has delayed its decision on air-pollution controls at Reid Gardner to allow for more public comment. Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (D) said in a statement, “Significant comments on the proposed permit, as well as new modeling analyses, indicate the strong need to protect public health and visibility on our public lands with the best possible technology.” Yeah.

To me, this story is highly illustrative. Coal companies and utilities have been operating outside scrutiny for so long, they seem completely unprepared to account for themselves. Whatever you can say about oil companies, they’ve been under attack long enough to have developed slick PR. Coal companies are killing people, they don’t seem aware or concerned, and they can barely even competently pretend to give a sh*t.

Filed under: Article, Coal]]>http://grist.org/coal/a-tragicomic-tale-of-coal-industry-incompetence-and-disregard/feed/0two-sidesdrgristThe Reid Gardner coal-fired power plantGOP tries to block black-lung protections. Big Tobacco would be proudhttp://grist.org/news/gop-tries-to-block-black-lung-protections-big-tobacco-would-be-proud/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_coal
http://grist.org/news/gop-tries-to-block-black-lung-protections-big-tobacco-would-be-proud/#commentsThu, 19 Jul 2012 21:40:48 +0000http://grist.org/?p=118646]]>House Republicans are trying to block efforts to protect coal miners from black lung disease. This comes just days after the Center for Public Integrity released a big report showing that black lung is making a comeback:

From 1968 through 2007, black lung caused or contributed to roughly 75,000 deaths in the United States, according to government data. In the decades following passage of the 1969 law [that first addressed black lung], rates of the disease dropped significantly. Then, in the late 1990s, this trend reversed.

House Republicans are seeking to extend their measure that blocks the Obama administration from moving forward with a new rule aimed at combating the resurgence of deadly black lung disease, which experts say has reached epidemic proportions in the Appalachian coalfields. …

If approved, the language would forbid [the Mine Safety and Health Administration] from using any funds from its budget to finalize its October 2010 proposal to tighten legal coal-dust limits and improve other protections for miners.

“House Republicans’ proposal to stop modern protections against black lung disease for our nation’s miners is outrageous and should be defeated,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and ranking minority member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts said the budget measure “amounts to nothing more than a potential death sentence for thousands of American miners.”

“Preventing black lung isn’t a matter of overregulation,” Roberts said. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

Emphasis added. The industry response?

Industry officials argue that recent increases in black lung rates are a regional problem and don’t require a new nationwide rule. Industry supporters in Congress have claimed that black lung rates have not increased and have blamed miners for not protecting themselves from excess dust.

That’s three arguments:

The increase is regional.

Cases haven’t increased.

It’s the miners’ fault.

Responses:

No, it isn’t.

Click to embiggen.

Yes, they have, as reported above.

Of course it isn’t. From the CPI report:

Donald Marcum knew he was at least a passive participant in something that was against the rules, maybe even criminal. Every couple of months, his bosses had to send MSHA five samples showing they were keeping dust levels under control. The man with the greatest potential exposure — often Donald because he was running a continuous mining machine, which chews through coal and rock and generates clouds of dust — was supposed to wear a pump to collect dust for eight hours.

That almost never happened. Most of the time, he said, the mine foreman or someone else would take the pump and hang it in the cleaner air near the mine’s entrance.

When MSHA inspectors showed up to take their own samples, it wasn’t so easy to cheat. Donald would actually wear the pump, but he and his co-workers would mine only about half as much coal as they normally did, generating far less dust.

If it’s the miners’ fault, it’s only because they understand the games they need to play to keep their jobs.

If opponents of better regulation were smart, they’d take a page out of the playbook of Big Tobacco, back when it, too, was trying to argue that it shouldn’t be regulated. Here’s an opinion piece that ran in the Chicago Tribune in 1998. Its author was an employee of the libertarian Cato Institute.

Prof. W. Kip Viscusi of Harvard Law School calculates that the extra health-care costs of smokers are about 50 cents per pack of cigarettes. But smokers do not live as long as non-smokers and, thus, smokers create savings for taxpayers that usually aren’t considered. Because smokers die earlier than non-smokers, taxpayers save expenditures that otherwise would be made for pensions as well as nursing home care and other costs related to conditions associated with old age.

When those savings are computed (at a 3 percent discount rate), they more than offset the costs that smokers create. Smokers actually save society about 32 cents per pack smoked.

That’s the argument that the mining companies and their friends on Capitol Hill should make. Take the head of the mining union’s concerns and run with them. Embrace that death sentence. Own it. Remove all the regulations in their entirety. The miners will die much faster and not be a drain on the government as their lungs atrophy and they slowly, eventually stop being able to breathe. Saves tax dollars. Plus, it’s a job creator: you don’t have much choice but to replace the dead guy.

Politics really isn’t that hard once you stop caring about the people you’re supposed to represent.

The average Chinese person’s carbon footprint is now almost on a par with the average European’s, figures released on Wednesday reveal.

… [T]oday’s report by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) show that per capita emissions in China increased by 9% in 2011 to reach 7.2 tonnes per person, only a fraction lower than the EU average of 7.5 tonnes.

The population of Europe is 595 million. The population of China is 1.35 billion. In otherwords, China emits 9.75 billion tons of CO2 to Europe’s 4.46 billion. Less per person, but far more overall.

But it’s not all the fault of the Chinese:

The figures published on Wednesday — like most official data on carbon emissions — are based on where fossil fuels are burned. A recent UK select committee report argued that it was also important to consider the import and export of goods when considering national responsibility for climate change. This would affect today’s data, because previous studies have suggested that almost a fifth of Chinese emissions are caused by the production of goods for export. [emphasis added]

Not only are U.S. consumers largely responsible for China’s emissions, we’re also still the reigning per-person champs.

The figure for the US is still much higher — at 17.3 tonnes — though total Chinese CO2 emissions are now around 80% higher than those of America. This widening gap reflects a 9% increase in total emissions in China in 2011, driven mainly by rising coal use, compared with a 2% decline in the US.

Children as young as 10 toil in illegal mines, often for 12 hours a day, activists say. Afghan officials agree the problem is stubborn despite recent efforts. The boys represent a thorny obstacle to the nation’s push to transform its antiquated mining industry into a modern economic engine. …

“I saw some children working there loading and unloading donkeys,” said Khalilulla … “All the people working there are extremely poor and don’t have any other job to feed their families except working in the mines.”

By Afghan government estimates, as many as a third of the nation’s children—more than 4 million—take part in some sort of work, from picking fruit to mining coal. U.N. officials estimate about 18% of Afghan children work—1.4 million between the ages of 6 and 15.

The United States banned child labor in 1938. Not as long ago as one might assume, but still two generations. Child labor is illegal in Afghanistan — but so was the mine in the footage.

A 2010 report by the Bamiyan provincial Human Rights Commission, an independent group, showed that 212 children between ages 12 and 18 were working in two unlicensed mines, including the one in the video, said Abdul Ahad Farzaam, the commission’s director. “Our investigation indicates those children were working there even during the night,” he said. “The environment isn’t suitable for children at all.”

It is not. It is also not terribly suitable for American adults, as a recent report from NPR detailed. Black lung disease, once on the brink of eradication, is back. Why? Not because we don’t have laws. Because they aren’t strong enough.

A post at Media Matters connected the dots between lax mine regulations, unsafe working conditions, Republican obstructionism, and media silence on the subject. It’s a really great exploration of how the coal industry and its advocates obscure the spike in black lung.

Shares of coal mining companies tumbled Monday as inventories continued to build with weaker demand in the slowing global economy. …

The coal industry has been battered this year as utilities switch to cheap natural gas from coal to generate electricity. Natural gas prices are low because of huge supplies resulting from widespread drilling in the nation’s shale deposits and soft demand for gas in the mild winter across much of the nation.

The International Monetary Fund lowered its outlook on Monday for global growth over the next two years. It also warned that Europe’s financial crisis and a potential budget crisis in the U.S. could slow world economic growth even more. That was not good news for coal producers who hope to offset falling U.S. demand with more shipments overseas.

Do not misunderstand: We love coal miners and coal country. (Ever been to West Virginia? Go! It’s beautiful!) We love Loretta Lynn (see below)! But nostalgia doesn’t seem like a great reason to ruin the atmosphere forever.

Patriot Coal, a St. Louis-based coal company, has filed for federal bankruptcy protection.

Coal companies have been hit hard by a decline in demand, arising in part from competition from cheap natural gas and a weaker economy. They have also blamed tougher environmental rules for rising costs.

All of these factors eroded Patriot’s financial health, the company argued. It has lost money every year since 2010, reporting a $198.5 million loss in the year that ended March 31.

“The coal industry is undergoing a major transformation and Patriot’s existing capital structure prevents it from making the necessary adjustments to achieve long-term success,” Irl F. Engelhardt, Patriot’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. “Our objective is to use the reorganization process to address important issues in an orderly way and make the company stronger and more competitive.”

Filed under: Business & Technology, Coal]]>http://grist.org/news/patriot-coal-files-for-bankruptcy/feed/0Patriot-Coal-Logo-homepbgristPatriot-Coal-Logo-homeBlack lung disease, once on the brink of extinction, is back. Thank the coal industryhttp://grist.org/news/black-lung-disease-once-on-the-brink-of-extinction-is-back-thank-the-coal-industry/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_coal
http://grist.org/news/black-lung-disease-once-on-the-brink-of-extinction-is-back-thank-the-coal-industry/#commentsMon, 09 Jul 2012 18:40:09 +0000http://grist.org/?p=116319]]>In February 1969, miners in West Virginia launched an illegal wildcat strike. The action halted extraction for half of the mines in the northern part of the state for days. The miners had one demand: end black lung disease.

The action worked. By the end of 1969, new policies went into effect in an effort to curb the disease, which results from the inhalation of coal dust and leads to long-term lung damage and impaired breathing. New exposure limits were set, and miners were offered regular chest X-rays and compensation for damage. Donald Rasmussen, a pulmonologist in West Virginia interviewed by NPR, has tested tens of thousands of miners over the past half-century.

“In 1969, I publicly proclaimed that the disease would go away before we learned all about it,” he adds. “And I was dead wrong.”

After decades of decline, black lung is back. Its resurgence is concentrated in central Appalachia. Younger miners are increasingly getting the most severe, fastest-progressing form of the disease.

The system for monitoring miners’ exposure to the dust that causes black lung allows companies to cheat or exploit loopholes. From 2000 to 2011, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA, received more than 53,000 valid samples showing an underground miner had been exposed to more dust than was allowed, yet the agency issued just under 2,400 violations. This may be attributable, in part, to rules that allow samples to be averaged, potentially masking some miners’ high exposures.

Even when companies get caught, they have little to fear. They can take five of their own dust samples to prove compliance, and an MSHA citation goes away. The agency has routinely given companies extra time to fix cited dust problems, granting extensions in 57 percent of cases between 2000 and 2011.

Miners have been exposed for years to excessive amounts of toxic silica dust, generated when powerful machines cut through rock. In each of the past 25 years, the average valid silica sample was above the allowed limit.

As always, though, the personal anecdotes are the most compelling aspect of the journalism. We won’t excerpt them here; go read them.

The key takeaway is simple: Critical protections for miners’ health have been dismantled or postponed through the concerted efforts of the mining industry and their allies on Capitol Hill. A companion report in the Charleston Gazette outlines four decades of obstruction:

For more than a quarter-century, government efforts to end deadly black lung disease have hit various brick walls, built by opposition from one side or the other. …

When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over the House of Representatives [in 1995], among their government streamlining proposals was to eliminate MSHA. Mine safety duties would be given instead to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, weakening the greater protections federal law gives to miners. [Then-MSHA chief Davitt] McAteer and other top Labor Department officials spent years fighting the change. They eventually won, but the damage to their agenda — including black lung reforms — was significant.

Even today, elected officials — including the ones representing those most impacted by the disease — are quick to embrace the industry while being slow to address its impacts.

This morning, The Hillposted an interview with Rep. David McKinley (R-W. Va.), a first-term member of the House and unabashed champion of coal use. McKinley offers no critique of the coal industry: no mention of pollution from coal-burning power plants, no mention the health of the miners. Instead, he argues that the government should regulate fossil fuels less than it currently does.

The impact of black lung. (Image courtesy of NIOSH.)

“If the people here in Congress would just back off their attack on fossil fuels and industry and manufacturers and pay a little bit more attention to what goes on in our homes and our offices, perhaps we would have a more healthy work environment rather than attacking our job creators,” McKinley said.

With tongue in cheek, McKinley suggests that the government might be just as well served addressing the contents of apple juice as regulating fossil fuels.

A wake-up call for some came after the Upper Big Branch explosion in southern West Virginia in April 2010, which killed 29 miners. Of the 24 who had enough lung tissue for an autopsy, 17 had signs of black lung. Some had fewer than 10 years of experience in mines; they ranged in age from 25 to 61.

The disease leaves miners’ lungs scarred, shriveled and black. They struggle to do routine tasks and are eventually forced to choose between eating and breathing.

“No human being should have to go through the misery that dying of [black lung] entails,” said Dr. Edward Petsonk, who treats patients with black lung and works with NIOSH. “It is like a screw being slowly tightened across your throat. Day and night towards the end, the miner struggles to get enough oxygen. It is really almost a diabolical torture.”

Germany just set a new record in solar energy production, creating 14.7 terawatt-hours of electricity over the first six months of 2012. Solar energy covered between 10 and 50 percent of the country’s peak hour demand on average every day. Nice work, Germany!

Demand for coal, the dirtiest fuel for making electricity, grew 3.3 percent last year in Europe while sales of less-polluting natural gas fell 2.1 percent, the steepest drop since 2009, according to a BP Plc report.

Oh man, Europe, what happened? We thought you were cool.

But even with some European Union member nations implementing efforts to increase the cost of carbon pollution, coal is still less expensive than the alternatives. And Europe has its enablers:

Cheaper coal was made possible partly by a 49 percent jump in first-quarter imports from the U.S., Energy Information Administration data show.

Coal is so cheap that even wasting two-thirds of its energy, adding additional fees, and having to schlep it across the Atlantic Ocean makes it economically worthwhile for European nations. The free market is a tough game to win when your only advantage is being right.

* Update: As Sean Casten notes, our original formulation that solar “doesn’t waste a watt” is giving the technology too much credit.

It will soon be nearly impossible to build a coal-fired power plant in New York. Regulators at the state Department of Environmental Conservation today set a tough CO2 limit for new plants that dirty coal units just won’t be able to meet. The feds have proposed a similar, though slightly less stringent, rule on the national scale.

An indication of how much new emissions rules and cheaper natural gas have hammered the value of coal-burning generation will come when Exelon announces the results of the first big sale of U.S. coal-fired power plants in four years.

Exelon, the largest U.S. power company, may have to take a 40 percent discount for three Maryland plants it’s seeking to sell by the end of August. Bidders including NRG Energy Inc. (NRG) have offered $600 million to $700 million for the units, which have a fair value of $1 billion, said Travis Miller, Chicago-based director of utilities research for Morningstar Inc.

“This is going to be the first meaningful transaction for coal assets since the downturn,” Julien Dumoulin-Smith, a New York-based analyst with UBS AG, said in a phone interview. “You can get a little anxious about what the repercussions are.”

The good news, of course, is that more power companies may elect to shutter existing facilities entirely, investing instead in cleaner, cheaper natural gas facilities — as they are in fact doing.

The bad news is that estimates of spending on pollution control (read: spending on jobs) will be lower than might have been expected. Over the long run, that’s probably a trade worth making.

Filed under: Coal]]>http://grist.org/news/coal-plants-are-the-vhs-tapes-of-the-energy-production-flea-market/feed/0Flea marketpbgristFlea marketEnough cheap coal: Using public lands for the public interesthttp://grist.org/coal/enough-cheap-coal-using-public-lands-for-the-public-interest/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_coal
http://grist.org/coal/enough-cheap-coal-using-public-lands-for-the-public-interest/#commentsMon, 25 Jun 2012 17:48:42 +0000http://grist.org/?p=113826]]>I hope everyone read Joe Smyth’s post about the upcoming “auction” of 721 million tons of publicly owned Powder River Basin (PRB) coal. “Auction” goes in scare quotes because there’s only one bidder: Peabody Coal, which can keep bidding at its leisure until it clears the ridiculously low minimum price established by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Peabody, of course, wants to export the coal.

If a one-bidder auction strikes you as shady, you’re not alone. As Juliet Eilperin reports in the Washington Post today, the practice “is being reviewed by the Interior Department’s inspector general and also will be the subject of an audit by the Government Accountability Office.”

There’s a reason only one or two bidders participate in these auctions: Only four big companies are operating in the PRB. They each have their own areas of land. When an adjoining lease opens up, one of them already has the equipment and infrastructure in place, so it will always be able to underbid a company bringing gear in from outside. So nobody bothers to bid against it. Cozy.

The net result is that taxpayers are getting screwed. According to a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, BLM’s non-competitive coal auctions have cost taxpayers “as much as $28.9 billion over the past 30 years.” It has to do with the Powder River basin being “decertified” as a coal-producing region, which is absurd. Read Smyth’s post for more on that.

The larger problem is that BLM is supposed to manage public lands in the best interests of the public, not coal companies, and it’s hard to argue that accelerating climate change by sending cheap coal overseas is in America’s best interests.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has a must-read report out on this today called “Using Public Lands for the Public Good.” It finds that, of the electricity generated by land and resources in the public estate, some 66 percent comes from coal. Coal, they say, “is the de facto priority for the use of the federal estate when it comes to power generation.” Just 1 percent of public land is used for wind and solar. What’s worse, projecting out 20 years shows no major change in the situation. (Coal goes down to about 57 percent.)

That does not comport with Obama’s much-ballyhooed vision of a clean energy future. Nor, given what we know about coal’s health and environmental impacts, does it comport with good sense or the national interest.

CAP’s primary policy recommendation is that …

… a “clean resources standard,” or CRS, for public lands and waters be implemented by executive order. This would require land management agencies to delineate what portion of publicly owned natural resources used for electricity generation will be clean and renewable — from wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and small hydro-electricity. We recommend the entirely achievable target of 35 percent renewable electricity from public lands and waters by 2035.

In addition, they recommend:

• Put a carbon price on coal mined on public lands
• Reform the leasing process for coal mined on public lands to achieve fair-market value
• Establish renewable energy zones on public lands and waters
• Include public lands and waters in the executive order on sustainability to better track the government’s carbon pollution
• Ensure that all federal environmental analyses include scientific carbon pollution studies

That all sounds about right to me.

When it comes to the federal government’s relationship with energy, a lot of attention gets focused on loan guarantee programs and tax credits and the like. But it’s time climate hawks clued in to the fact that the feds — that is to say, we, collectively — own a sh*tload of land and resources, much of which can be used for energy. Among other things, this land we own provides 43.2 percent of the nation’s coal. Not only do we offer this coal up, but we practically beg coal companies to mine it, offering them “billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies via preferential tax treatments such as the ability to expense exploration and development costs, tax deductions to cover the costs of investments in mines, and favorable capital gains treatment on royalties.”

Why are we doing that? We know more than we used to about the damage done by coal mining and combustion. We know more than we used to about the dangers of climate change. There’s no excuse any more for us to allow our common heritage to be used in a way that hurts Americans, the planet, and future generations.

The more sophisticated reason is the idea that coal has negative impacts on the economy and on public health which are not incorporated into its price. There’s also a practical sense in which coal is too cheap: Coal producers pay far too little for it.

The government’s longtime practice of auctioning coal mining rights to a single bidder may have cost taxpayers as much as $28.9 billion over the past 30 years, according to an analysis to be released Monday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a Cambridge, Mass.-based think tank. …

The phenomenon — in which a mining company draws up a proposed area for leasing, and the Interior Department’s BLM auctions it off to that same firm — is the rule rather than the exception in the country’s single biggest coal producing region. In the 26 coal leases the federal government has awarded in southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming since 1991, 22 have gone to a single bidder. In the other four instances, there were only two bidders involved.

The benefit to companies that “win” such contracts are often immediate.

For now, the market appears to be rewarding the handful of companies operating there when they obtain leasing rights at a low cost. Cloud Peak Energy’s stock price rose 4.8 percent in a single day last year when it obtained a federal lease for a lower-than-expected price, and the target price was raised 19 percent by analysts.

“I don’t really blame the companies, though they’re complicit in it,” said Mark Squillace, director of the Natural Resources Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School. “They’re taking advantage of what the government is allowing them to do.”

Last week during discussion on a Senate measure aimed at blocking the EPA’s mercury regulation, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made an impassioned plea for the coal industry — of which he’s long been an ally — to recognize its perilous position. In doing so, he notes without irony his state’s competition with cheaper regions.

The cheap, easy coal seams are diminishing, and production is falling — especially in the Central Appalachian Basin in Southern West Virginia. Production is shifting to lower cost areas like the Illinois and Powder River Basins.

The solution, of course, is not to reduce the cost of West Virginia’s coal production. At the very least, the solution is to make production in the Powder River Basin reflect the actual worth of the minerals being extracted on the existing market. This is something that one would think a United States senator might be able to impact.

As for the price of coal ever reflecting all of its external costs: If you think that’s going to happen, I have a seam of coal shaped like the Brooklyn Bridge that I’d like to sell you.

Update: There’s another sphere of competition that Rockefeller noted in his comments: natural gas.

Under the direction of CEO Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake Energy Corp. plotted with its top competitor to suppress land prices in one of America’s most promising oil and gas plays, a Reuters investigation has found.

In emails between Chesapeake and Encana Corp, Canada’s largest natural gas company, the rivals repeatedly discussed how to avoid bidding against each other in a public land auction in Michigan two years ago and in at least nine prospective deals with private land owners here.

The invisible hand of the free market could not be reached for comment.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Coal, Politics]]>http://grist.org/news/coal-companies-routinely-win-competitive-bids-against-no-competition/feed/0Coal trucks in the Powder River BasinpbgristCoal trucks in the Powder River BasinHow Peabody gets dirt-cheap land and the rest of us get a gigaton of carbon pollutionhttp://grist.org/coal/how-peabody-gets-dirt-cheap-land-and-the-rest-of-us-get-a-gigaton-of-carbon-pollution/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_coal
http://grist.org/coal/how-peabody-gets-dirt-cheap-land-and-the-rest-of-us-get-a-gigaton-of-carbon-pollution/#commentsSun, 24 Jun 2012 11:49:08 +0000http://grist.org/?p=113712]]>A version of this article originally appeared on Climate Progress.The BLM lets Peabody lease public land for next to nothing and strip-mine it for coal.

On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is scheduled to hold an “auction” for 721 million tons of taxpayer-owned coal in the Powder River Basin.

This is for the North Porcupine tract, and like the South Porcupine tract that BLM leased to Peabody last month — even though this coal is owned by you and me — the lease was drawn up by Peabody itself for its own profit. This is what’s known as a “lease by application,” and under BLM’s corrupt coal-leasing program, Peabody will almost certainly be the only bidder and pay next to nothing.

WildEarth Guardians’ 2009 report “UnderMining the Climate” [PDF] found that over the last 20 years, only three of 21 lease by applications had more than one bidder. Since Peabody knows it will face no competitive pressure, it can simply offer the lowest possible price, secure in the knowledge that if it doesn’t meet BLM’s absurdly low minimum price, it can just try again later. In fact, that’s just what happened with the South Porcupine tract; Peabody’s initial offer of just $0.90 per ton was rejected as too low by the BLM — so they simply held another auction a few weeks later and accepted Peabody’s offer of $1.11 per ton. In both “auctions” Peabody was the only bidder.

Incredibly, BLM’s coal-leasing program deliberately encourages this uncompetitive process. Allowing lease by applications was a key change made possible once the BLM moved to decertify the Powder River Basin as a coal-producing region — even though it’s the source of almost half the coal mined in the U.S. BLM is supposed to manage this coal “in the best interests of the nation,” and it has a process meant to determine the fair market value of a lease. But as Tom Sanzillo explains [PDF], the BLM’s methods dramatically undervalue the coal, so much so that it has amounted to a $28.9 billion subsidy over the last 30 years.

It’s clear that the BLM’s coal-leasing program is deliberately designed to benefit a few coal mining companies like Peabody and Arch at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. This has become even more outrageous now that coal mining companies are seeking to dramatically expand exports of this taxpayer-owned coal. And that’s why Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has called [PDF] for a Government Accountability Office examination of the BLM’s coal-leasing practices.

Beyond the lost revenue, however, BLM’s undervaluing of this coal is helping fuel the devastating impacts to public health, the environment, and our climate system that inevitably accompany mining and burning this much coal. The BLM is facing a lawsuit from WildEarth Guardians and the Sierra Club because it ignores the impacts of the greenhouse gases that will result from leasing this coal.

And the amount of carbon pollution that will be emitted when this coal is burned is enormous.

The 721 million tons of coal contained in Thursday’s South Porcupine lease amounts to 1,196,456,240 metric tons of CO2 — just over a billion metric tons, or a gigaton of CO2. That’s over 10 times the 101 million metric tons of CO2 that the federal government hopes to reduce its own emissions over a decade-long period under President Obama’s executive order. Despite the fact that the emissions from burning this coal would not be possible without the BLM’s leasing activities, the government does not include emissions associated with federal leasing of coal, oil, and gas in its inventory of federal emissions.

We can also make sense of the vast amount of carbon pollution we’re talking about here with the help of the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator. The emissions from the 721 million tons of coal in the South Porcupine is equivalent to the annual emissions of over 234 million passenger cars — that’s nearly all the cars in the U.S. Another way of measuring this coal — especially important for those in the Pacific Northwest resisting the industry’s efforts to ship it through their communities for export to Asia — is that 721 million tons of coal is enough to fill 6.5 million train cars.

The BLM’s corrupt coal-leasing program is fueling climate change with billions of tons of carbon pollution, and it’s been a rip-off for U.S. taxpayers for decades. If the BLM proceeds with the auction of the North Porcupine tract Thursday, they can expect to be confronted by protesters. How long does the industry think it can keep this boondoggle going as it seeks to turn the American West into a resource colony?

Today marks a symbolic vote in the Senate: Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is putting forward a Congressional Review Act resolution [PDF] that would stop the EPA’s impending standards on mercury and other toxic power plant emissions in their tracks.

You see, Inhofe’s vote put pressure on Romney to take a stand on the mercury rule. It’s an awkward spot for Romney. As governor of Massachusetts he supported renewable energy and led a crusade against the state’s dirtiest coal plant over Clean Air Act violations. Here he is, pointing to it and saying, “that plant kills people” and “I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people.”

He wasn’t alone. It was common then and remains common today for Northeastern governors, regardless of party, to be supportive of EPA protections. Most Republican senators from the Northeast plan to vote against Inhofe. Their citizens are the ones bearing the brunt of the harm from coal-plant poison.

President Obama cannot claim to support clean coal while imposing regulations that his EPA admits would prevent another coal plant from ever being built.

To paraphrase: “Obama cannot claim to support clean coal while passing rules saying coal has to be clean.” Uh … sure he can. In fact that seems exactly like what someone who supports clean coal would do: prohibit dirty coal! After all, nobody is going to build clean coal if it’s cheap and legal to build dirty coal instead. Why bother?

Obviously, EPA never “admitted” that mercury standards would stop new coal, or said anything of the sort, Inhofe’s hype-mongering notwithstanding. One EPA official was overheard saying it would be “tough” for new coal plants. And it will be! But why?

There’s no legal barrier to utilities building coal plants that meet modern pollution-control standards, including EPA’s new mercury and carbon dioxide standards. The problem — utilities know this, the coal industry knows this, everyone knows this — is that clean coal cannot compete with natural gas and wind. Coal’s competitive edge is that it’s allowed to be dirty. Once it loses that advantage, no one will want to build it.

The stampede away from coal is already underway and will continue whether or not new mercury rules are finalized. Meeting even the pollution standards already on the books renders coal generation unable to compete economically in today’s energy markets. The only reason 40 or so percent of U.S. electricity still comes from coal is that a bunch of plants that don’t meet those standards are still running.

You can support clean coal, but that means supporting a dramatically diminished role for coal in the U.S. energy system. Or you can support dirty coal and the maintenance or expansion of the coal industry’s current size. But you cannot have your cake and eat it too, no matter what sort of garbled rhetoric the truth-challenged Romney campaign coughs up.

One of the core tenets of the environmental justice movement is that poorer communities and communities of color disproportionately bear the negative impacts of a pollution-rife economy. Power plants and water treatment centers aren’t built in affluent areas.

Now, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being asked to decide if the location of a landfill is a violation of a predominantly black community’s civil rights.

In 2011, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (DEM) renewed the permit for a landfill in Uniontown, Ala. The Arrowhead landfill is authorized to receive more solid waste per day than any other landfill in the state — waste that includes coal ash, toxic residue from coal-burning power plants. Four million tons of ash from Tennessee’s 2008 Kingston power plant spill ended up at Arrowhead.

This January, residents filed a complaint with the EPA, arguing that the renewal of the permit was a discriminatory violation of the Civil Rights Act. From a report at the Huffington Post:

The Uniontown facility has been the focus of a long and contentious battle between the mostly black residents living nearby and the developers of the landfill, which opened for receipt of municipal waste and other trash in 2007. The facility is currently permitted to receive up to 15,000 daily tons of municipal, industrial, commercial and construction waste — as well as “special waste” like coal ash — from nearly three dozen states.

Taken in aggregate, the civil rights complaint argues, the population of that expansive service area is predominantly white, while the population bordering the landfill is nearly 100 percent African American.

Here are the demographics of the area around the landfill. (Images below are from the complaint [PDF].)

Click to embiggen.

Over 30 states dump waste at Arrowhead. The racial makeup of those states is largely white.

Click to embiggen.

If the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights finds that the complaint is warranted, their response is limited. The Alabama DEM could lose federal funding and be ordered to lessen the landfill’s impact on the community. A ruling is expected at the end of the year.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), a first-of-its-kind baseline regulating the emission of mercury (and, as you might have guessed, other airborne toxics) from coal- and oil-fueled power plants. Today, the Senate, led by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will vote on blocking the regulation from ever taking effect. Thanks, Senate!

Obviously, everyone you know will be talking about this. Americans are obsessed with the intricacies of governmental regulation and the procedures by which they are overturned. So to ensure that you’re the life of any party, we’ve put together this overview.

What is the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard?

The rule itself is straightforward. By reducing — not eliminating — mercury, sulfur dioxides, and particulate matter emissions, the EPA estimates that between 4,000 and 11,000 premature deaths can be prevented each year. That includes 4,700 heart attacks avoided, and 130,000 asthma attacks. The total economic benefits from this improved health are measured at between $37 billion and $90 billion annually.

It is true that the mercury rule, and other clean air regulations, will require substantial upgrades in older, coal-burning power plants and force others to close down. The power companies have had years to prepare. In addition to reducing emissions of global warming gases and ground-level pollutants, the upgrades are expected to create as many as 45,000 temporary construction jobs over the next five years and possibly 8,000 permanent jobs.

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma is expected to bring his Congressional Review Act to a vote this week. A simple majority in favor of the resolution would not only overturn MATS, but also block the EPA from passing similar standards in the future.

The Miami Herald‘s editorial in favor of MATS outlines Inhofe’s plan: He wants to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to halt implementation and stymie future efforts to curb pollution. (Pollution that forces people to take 540,000 sick days each year. Job killer!)

You can thank Newt Gingrich for the CRA. Passed as part of the Contract With America after the 1996 elections, the CRA “imposes new restraints on the so-called ‘independent’ Agencies,” as the Harvard Law Review notes [PDF] — though not in the realm of blocking regulation. Congress has always had that power. In effect, the CRA is like a de facto censure, a statement that “we don’t like what you’re doing.” The restraints the Harvard Law Review refers to are more subtle and less relevant to our discussion. Feel free to read the interesting/long paper. Extra credit will be awarded.

So it comes down to the Senate. Reports indicate that the Inhofe has 29 other senators prepared to vote with him. The figure is good news for Inhofe, as the CRA stipulates that measures with at least 30 supporters can skip the committee process. In a Democrat-controlled Senate, that’s important.

After being fired by Cumberland River Coal Company last year, Charles Scott Howard sued, alleging that he was fired for blowing the whistle on the company’s safety issues. On Friday, a court agreed. From the Huffington Post:

A federal judge ordered Friday that Howard’s company immediately reinstate him at the mine and pay a $30,000 fine for discriminating against a whistleblower. The sharply worded decision said managers at Cumberland River, as well as its parent company, coal giant Arch Coal, went to great lengths to find a reason to fire Howard after he brought his mine to the attention of federal safety officials.

“It is obvious that [Cumberland River] worked diligently to end Howard’s employment,” wrote Margaret A. Miller, an administrative law judge for the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. “The discrimination against Howard ran through [Cumberland River] and its parent, Arch, at the highest management levels.” …

In 2007, Howard recorded video of faulty seals in the mine that was presented to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. When he suffered a head injury on the job, the court determined that his employer unlawfully used the injury as an excuse to fire him.

Howard’s complaint was brought by the U.S. Labor Department, which was represented by attorney Mary Sue Taylor. The department recommended that a $20,000 penalty be levied against Cumberland River, but the judge instead bumped it up to $30,000. Per standard procedure, Miller also ordered that Cumberland River post a notice of the ruling so that it’s visible to every employee at the mine, “explaining that the company has been found to have discriminated against an employee, that such discrimination will be remedied and that it will not occur in the future.”

Howard said he will continue to speak up about dangers in mining, regardless of what trouble it may bring him.

It’s also brought him some fame. The video below is a folk song dedicated to him.

Last September, we reported that “peak coal” had come to Appalachia. There’s a reason that the industry is relying on destructive practices like mountaintop-removal mining: Coal is harder to come by. Mines have increasingly small seams of coal to extract.

The share of U.S. electricity that comes from coal is forecast to fall below 40 percent for the year — the lowest level since the government began collecting this data in 1949. Four years ago, it was 50 percent. By the end of this decade, it is likely to be near 30 percent.

“The peak has passed,” says Jone-Lin Wang, head of Global Power for the energy research firm IHS CERA.

The industry likes to blame regulation and the EPA for its weak position. But, as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson points out, the problem is economic. More difficult extraction raises costs. Natural gas extraction is growing at a ridiculous pace, causing the price of gas to drop. These are trends that won’t reverse any time soon — by which we mean ever. For utilities, there’s not much difficulty in a choice between adjusting to a fuel source that is cheap and will stay cheap or one that is growing more expensive in both unit price and clean-up costs.

“Even without the EPA rules, coal is not really competitive,” Wang says.

For the industry, the economic impact is immediate.

The shift from coal is reverberating across Appalachia, where mining companies are laying off workers and cutting production. Utilities across the country are grappling with how to store growing piles of unused coal. And legal disputes are breaking out as they try to cancel contracts and defer deliveries.

In a bad economy, people being put out of work is never a reason to celebrate. But a transition away from coal, even to a still-not-ideal natural gas-based utility system, is a very good thing.

As local elected officials representing big cities and small towns, we want to express our strong support for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently issued Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for Power Plants (MATS). Mayors are on the front lines of protecting public health and this long overdue safeguard will reap tremendous benefits for our communities.

Mercury pollution, much of it coming from coal-fired power plants, represents a particularly widespread threat to families nationwide. According to your agency’s own analysis, as of 2010, all 50 states have fish consumption advisories in place to warn residents of the potential health effects of eating fish caught from local waters. Of these advisories, 81% were issued in part because of mercury pollution accumulated within the aquatic food chain. …

Clean, healthy air and water are fundamental American rights and we are eager to work with your agency to ensure these historic protections are quickly implemented.

This is maybe the only time you’ll see the mayors of Montgomery, Ala., and Oak Park Heights, Minn., on either side of Michael Bloomberg’s name on a list.

Tallying the predictions of energy industry executives is an interesting exercise. Like any dominant business sector, the energy industry’s predictive powers are limited by one key damper: a blindness to change that might undermine their dominance.

But we have an opportunity to look through their tinted shades. Each year, the consulting firm Black & Veatch asks utility executives for their predictions on how the field will evolve. Highlights from the survey:

The percentage of respondents who think coal has a future in our energy supply dropped from 81.5 to 60 percent over the last year.

But utility prices will keep going up, because government.

The execs see economic opportunity in renewable energy and technologies, even predicting that 7 percent of the country’s electricity in 2025 will go to electric vehicles.

The industry is worried about water availability for its cooling systems. See: Texas. Where the water went is, of course, anyone’s guess. Probably the sun’s rotation or something, maybe.

That first data point is remarkable. These are executives of companies who stand astride the business world, sitting atop a massive pyramid of success. People in such positions usually only recognize the path they took to the top — and they usually pooh-pooh other pyramids being built around them as insubstantial, doomed to fail. After all, the landscape is littered with abandoned, miniature pyramids.

The pyramids these executives are sitting on are black with coal — so their recognition that coal’s era has ended indicates acceptance that their dominance may also be ending. That’s a difficult moment for an established business. Here, it’s enmeshed with the increased faith in renewable energy: If utility companies think they can turn a profit from renewables, they’ll be more willing to accept that the profits earned with coal are evaporating. But they still blame the pesky, know-it-all government and its regulations for utility price increases. Which is partly warranted: Coal has been artificially cheap for a long time; new pollution standards that make coal pay for its health effects are just one effort to fix that problem. Government (aiming to save 11,000 lives a year) is pushing these companies from behind; renewable opportunities are pulling them forward.

Two other things to note: First, the water problem is a big one — and is largely due to climate change that the power plants themselves contributed to, of course. The New York Times notes that, in addition to making water scarce, global warming will warm existing bodies of water used to cool power plants — meaning they’ll be less efficient in power production. Second: Too bad consumers aren’t educated about smart grids and meters. If only the utility companies were in regular communication with them and could provide some material to address that! But they aren’t, I assume.

The world is moving forward. Seems like maybe utility companies are starting to, as well. Pyramids on wheels.

These vintage photos of Pittsburgh, from before it passed a smoke-control ordinance in 1941, are so hazy that some of them look like they’ve been hit with some kind of artsy-grunge Instagram filter. But this is just what an industrial city looked like in those days — clogged with a low fog of coal-based factory belchings.

West Virginia coal activist Maria Gunnoe is used to intimidation, as writer/blogger Aaron Bady points out. It’s one thing to oppose coal companies from the office of the mayor of New York City. It’s another to do it, as Gunnoe does, from the West Virginia valley floors where the coal companies live.

Her water, from a source on her property, wasn’t usable. Like many others in the region relying on wells and local sources, she depended on water that had been contaminated by run-off from the coal industry’s retrieval process. In some cases, the water was visibly polluted, running yellow- or copper-colored directly from the tap. Gunnoe’s efforts to stem pollution somewhat ironically meant she might be able to escape it.

Her neighbors weren’t (and aren’t) as lucky. Last week, Gunnoe joined some of them in Washington, D.C., to present the stories of people in her community at an oversight hearing of the House Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. In a better world, the hearing would have ended with a commitment to stem the pollution. It ended much differently.

Aaron Bady is a journalist who lives in California and writes for The New Inquiry magazine; his mother is the founder of an organization Gunnoe works with. Over the weekend, he told the story of what happened next.

Gunnoe’s planned testimony included this photo of a child bathing in water that is the color of a pumpkin, offset at the far end of the tub by a cluster of bath-fun bubbles. Gunnoe wanted to show the committee this photo, but the presiding politicians decided it was inappropriate. (The child was, as bathing children generally are, unclothed.) So the activist presented other evidence instead: ruined streams, stories of people with polluted water and air.

Then, when she was done and preparing to leave, the Capitol Police pulled her aside. Republican members of the panel had suggested that she be questioned about child pornography.

Bady’s telling of the story is thorough and astonishing. But there’s another point that should be made. Each of us has, in our picture albums or in iPhoto, images of ourselves as toddlers similar to Falkenberg’s photo, with one difference: the color of the water. And that’s what should be considered pornographic, unacceptable — not the child covering her skin with it.

We understand that the coal companies, desperate to keep profits flowing, want to shut down criticism by any means necessary. But we must expect our decision-makers — the judges of the state of the world, tasked with its improvement — to do far better than this. Intimidation should not be a part of democracy.

Big polluters and their congressional allies have created a new straw man to knock down with the invention of the so-called “war on coal.” It is a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign funded by Big Coal polluters to protect their profits and distract Americans from the deadly effects of air pollution on public health.

However, with the number of coal jobs in key coal states actually on the rise since 2009, it’s more like peacetime prosperity than war in coal country. The War on Coal is nothing more than a new shiny object, designed by big polluters to distract Americans from the real war — the polluters’ attacks on their health — and the truth.

Coal companies and dirty utilities claim that long-overdue requirements to reduce mercury, arsenic, smog, acid rain, and carbon pollution from power plants will kill jobs. In West Virginia, however, coal mining employment was higher in 2011 than at any time over the last 17 years. Federal jobs statistics also show modest coal mining job growth in coal states like Virginia and Pennsylvania.

In West Virginia, a recent report from the nonpartisan West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy showed coal mining jobs are actually rising, with 1,500 new coal jobs added since 2009. In Pennsylvania, Energy Information Administration (EIA) data shows a 2.3 percent increase in coal-related jobs. And in Virginia, EIA data shows a 6.7 percent increase in coal mining employment from 2009 to 2010.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has promulgated or proposed new clean air standards for smog, acid rain, mercury, air toxics, and carbon pollution that will save lives, create jobs, and protect public health. For example, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard [PDF] alone could prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 130,000 asthma incidents, and 540,000 lost work days every year. This would provide at least $59 billion in economic benefits.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) projects that the mercury standard will actually have a “positive net impact on overall employment — likely leading to the net creation of 84,500 jobs between now and 2015.” The jobs created by the standard, however, would not just be limited to certain industrial sectors. EPI’s study projects that “8,000 jobs would be gained in the utility industry itself,” along with the over 80,500 jobs that would be created to build pollution control equipment. While dirty coal companies claim that the mercury standard will cause massive unemployment, EPI notes that “only 10,600 jobs would be displaced due to higher energy costs.” Richard Morgenstern, a former Reagan and Clinton EPA official, predicts that the new standard will have “no net impact” on employment.

EPA predicts that its proposed carbon pollution standard [PDF] for new power plants will have no impact on employment or existing coal plants.In fact, the standard simply complements existing market factors, as the EPA points out:

Because this standard is in line with current industry investment patterns, this proposed standard is not expected to have notable costs and is not projected to impact electricity prices or reliability.

So what is happening to King Coal? The real culprit is the low price for natural gas. A February 2012 analysis of coal plant retirements by the Analysis Group [PDF] found that coal plant declines resulted from basic changes in market forces:

The sharp decline in natural gas prices, the rising cost of coal, and reduced demand for electricity are all contributing factors in the decisions to retire some … coal-fired generating units. These trends started well before EPA issued its new air pollution standards.

Coal industry executives themselves say that low natural gas prices, a warm winter, and a sluggish economy are the primary reasons for coal mining worker layoffs. The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) noted [PDF] that industry-commissioned doomsday projections of economic losses from EPA standards are vastly exaggerated by including unrelated regulations and worst-case scenarios. BPC found that “several investment analysts were conducted prior to EPA’s [rule] proposal and made worst case estimates about what EPA was likely to require.”

Coal-generated electricity is relatively inexpensive because the public pays for the external costs from burning coal. These expensive harms include premature deaths, asthma attacks, respiratory ailments, lost productivity, and the impacts of climate change. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that burning coalcosts $62 billion annually due to premature deaths, more respiratory ailments, and lost work days.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — a front group for coal companies and dirty utilities — plans to spend at least $40 million in ads and lobbying to convince Congress to block these vital public health standards. Fortunately, voters won’t be fooled by this attempt to distract them from the real public health impacts of dangerous air pollution. We understand that this isn’t a war on coal. It’s a war on us.